I wanted to go here to celebrate my 40th birthday! One of my bucket list of things to do! And almost seven years later... it finally came to fruition.
Can you guess where we went? Does Emily's creative nail art give you any clue?
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| It's a cruise ship! |
YES we went on a cruise! A Mediterranean Cruise to be exact! It was our first time flying on Air France. (By the way that was one of the most uncomfortable flights I ever flew on. No amenities other than an eye mask, a super thin blanket and the AC was blasting like it was 100 degrees in the plane! I was freezing! I so appreciate Cathay Pacific now!)
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| Here we are dropped off by Angela (taking the picture) and her daughter Rachel (who did not come with us) and our 5 luggage pieces! |
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| Majority of our luggage in a Mercedes van that picked us up to head to our hotel. |
My family along with my parents, my brother, Park and his wife, and my cousin, Cheryl and her family gave us a total of 12 travelers and 12 luggage pieces! We probably didn't need that much luggage but since we had to bring an extra outfit each day for dinner (they had formal and semi formal dining) on the cruise... and there was no accessible laundry facilities, you can imagine the amount of clothing we had to bring.
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| A too brief stop in Paris (the airport that is) to change planes... |
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| ... gave me just enough time to purchase some of the famous Laduree macarons. Yes they were very delicious and expensive. $22 US for 6 pieces but it came in a fancy take-away box. |
Finally after 12 hours we landed in Barcelona, Spain. We spent three days here before boarding our ship.
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| Hannah welcoming you to our room #2204. We got a Garden View room which I specifically requested due to the noise level from the street in the evenings (as per the reviews). One of the twin beds was near the front door. |
We stayed at the Petit Palace Opera Garden Hotel on the popular Las Ramblas street. I was pre- warned that European hotels are small and not as luxurious as American hotels (well at least the ones I like to stay at). So my expectations were not high.
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| The hallway to the main bedroom section where there was another twin bed along with a desk and a laptop you can freely use! Notice no carpets anywhere and the closet space was minimal. No where to sit your luggage and the room smelled like wet towels. |
This was impressively large to fit a family of four. There were 4 beds (two of which were put together to make a king but the bedding was still made up for one person for each bed.. strange huh?) Plus the beds had no padding whatsoever. It felt like I was sleeping on the floor! My back ached! After two nights of torture, I switched beds with Hannah (their twins were a little bit softer) padded it with two blankets and finally got a better night's sleep!
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| We had a balcony to look out in to the garden. Perfect to air out our room from the wet towel smell but there were no screens anywhere.. thus we had to risk having bugs fly in at any time. |
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| The bathroom looked modern enough but it didn't have a bidet (which I was dying to try out!) |
The bathtub/shower only had half a glass door so a ton of water would spray out onto the floor. This glass door also swung open when you pushed it so there was literally nothing you can hang onto. I'm at least thankful it had something...I heard that most showers in Europe did not have any curtains nor doors so the whole bathroom becomes the shower!
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| In front of the hotel garden steps |
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| Mandy, Don, Cheryl and Kyle (who was exhausted from the long flight.. could you tell?) |
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| My mom, Park, Hilda and my dad |
Once we checked in, we explored our surrounding area before dinner. Las Ramblas is a pedestrian street filled with restaurants markets and stores.
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| Las Ramblas at night |
We headed into the open market called the Boqueria Market which puts Chinese markets to shame..
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| You can get pretty much any kind of meat here.. check out the item in the clear plastic container.. that's brain and oh those poor wee little lambs! |
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| Check out the teeth on these fish! |
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| The produce was beautiful but no touching. I picked up a bunch of baby radishes (pictured under my mom's elbow) and was literally yelled at by the merchant.. in Spanish of course. I apologized but she ranted and raved at me.. I felt bad but since I didn't understand her I didn't feel as bad. Apparently she chooses the produce for you.. you don't. Definitely not Asian friendly! |
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| Lots of cured meats... |
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| Seafood galore! |
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| Baked goods |
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| The egg lady |
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| Fruit so appealing |
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| And the gummy candies were mouth-watering but unfortunately there were no hygienic protectors so I and the girls passed on purchasing any.. |
The Boqueria is a not-to-miss place to check out in Barcelona!
NEXT UP: Old and Odd
